"Ah, but you were different--you always had been different. You were a Jenison. What are you going to say when some one--and there always will be the miserable some one--reminds you that he saw your wife when she was Little Starbright? What--" "Don't look so miserable, Christine! If any one says that to me I shall congratulate him." "Congrat--Oh, do be serious! It doesn't matter what I am to-day, David; it's what I was such a little while ago. I am not trying to belittle myself. _I_ am proud of what I am. Don't misunderstand me. I am a Portman! _Her_ blood is in me--her mind, her soul. But I am not all Portman. Suppose, David--suppose that my father were to come back some day. We know what he is--what he was. Perhaps the world may have forgotten, but suppose that he reminds the world of the fact that he is my father--" "Christine! You are working yourself into a dreadful state over all this--" "Am I not calm? Am I excited? No; you see I am not." "Dearest, I want you to be my wife. You urge me to think in time. Haven't I thought it all out? What more is there for me to think about, save my love for you? You are not presenting new conditions to me, sweetheart. They are old ones. I do not intend that either of us shall sail under false colors. When you go to Jenison Hall as my wife, it shall also be as the daughter of Thomas Braddock, the showman." "But, David, he may have fallen so low--he may have sunk to the very lowest--oh, you must understand. We have heard nothing from him. We don't know where he is, nor what his life has been. Suppose--oh, I can't bear to think of it." He put his hands on her cheeks and turned her face so that he could look squarely into her eyes. He saw the trouble there, the agony of doubt. "Look at me, Christine," he said gently. The light in his eyes held her. "It doesn't matter what he was, what he is or what he may become. I love you, as I have always loved you. You are going to be my wife. That is the end of it all." His heart was sinking, however, under the weight of the thing he knew, the thing she was yet to know. He would have given all he possessed in the world for the power to shield her from the blow that was yet to fall.